A standardized format to store and transport
production schedules and breakdowns across the entertainment industry

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The Problem

Production schedules are indispensable documents in the entertainment industry, containing the core information that is consumed both during prep and on set.

An increasing number of software tools have been created that either create or consume this schedule data. Unfortunately, the creators of these tools and their users found that there was no easy way to transport this data from one application to another.

When transportability problems like this have occurred in the past, creators had tended to generate their own custom import/export solutions. This inevitably resulted in a fractured landscape of multiple file formats that needed to be maintained and supported.

Additionally, unnecessary resources were placed on promoting file formats, which bring little value to their creators and only served to ultimately annoy the end user.

The Solution - Universal Schedule Standard

The Universal Schedule Standard is a method to store and transport schedule and breakdown data across all existing and future platforms.

Using one standard makes the user's data portable, allowing them to create a schedule in one application and then transfer that information to another application that might create budgets, call sheets or other useful end products.

Each company using the standard has reduced their work load, as they avoid supporting myriad competing formats. These various applications are lighter and more easily manageable with only one import/export format to support.

And perhaps most importantly, end users gain confidence in the entire sector and will more freely use multiple services, with the knowledge that their data is always portable and safe.

Features

The standard has been carefully crafted to serve all sectors of the entertainment industry. It allows for:

• Transport - use it to easily move entire schedules or breakdowns between applications or services
• Storage - provides a common format for legacy data
• Future Proofing - stores data in a simple text format that will be readable by any system in the future
• Flexibility - the schedule and breakdown data are stored separately, allowing for the storage of just breakdown data without a schedule, if desired
• Storage of Metadata - includes important additional data such as calendars, multiple stripboards, individual settings for elements, etc.
• Conforms to the Universal Category Identification standard so that all breakdown categories are easily identified and parsed
• Open standard - no licensing fees - free to use
• Not reliant on any third party resources or services
• Is extensible if you'd like to store additional data
• Works interchangeably as a file and as data in an API call

Details

This standard has been designed as a concise way to store as much schedule and breakdown data as possible in a format that is both human and machine readable.

The schedule and breakdown data are stored in JSON format, allowing for easily parsable import/export operations either in a saved file or through an API call.

Here is an example of the entire standard object:

{
  "universalScheduleStandard": {
    "id": "5d9fc8cfc0efae0017a32a11",
    "author": "Jane Smith",
    "company": "RKO Pictures",
    "created": "2022-10-07T00:12:06.000Z",
    "description": "This is a description of the schedule",
    "episode": "101",
    "episodeName": "Pilot",
    "name": "My schedule name",
    "project": "It's A Wonderful Life",
    "schedColor": "Blue",
    "schedDate": "2022-10-07T07:00:00.000Z",
    "scriptColor": "Yellow",
    "scriptDate": "2022-10-01T07:00:00.000Z",
    "season": "S03",
    "source": "Name of originating site or app",
    "ussVersion": "1.0.0",

    "breakdowns": [],
    "categories": [],
    "elements": [],
    "stripboards": [],
    "calendars": []
  }
}

The last five items in this object are where the schedule and breakdown data are stored. That data is merely a series of additional sub-objects that are stored in those arrays.

Examples

See the small sample file in the /samples folder for a brief example. To keep the sample file as readable as possible, it only contains one scene and a few elements. A full sample schedule of course contains more data and illustrates a real world implementation of the standard on a full schedule.

Validator

We have created a simple validator function that takes a USS object and parses it for validity. See more about that project here.

Web Site

More information is available on the Universal Schedule Standard website, at universalschedulestandard.org.

Documentation

For detailed instructions about the structure and format of the standard object, please read the detailed documentation found in the /docs folder.

Collaborators

The following collaborators proudly support the Universal Schedule Standard:

• Boom Interactive
• Cinapse
• Croo
• Everyset
• FilmUStage
• Scriptation
• Set Hero
• Think Crew
• Virtual Production Partners

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.